So the woman had peace. Even in her loneliness, she had peace--knowing that she had done well. And the woman tried, now, to interest herself in the things that so many of the women of her day seemed to find so interesting. She listened to brave lectures by stalwart women on woman's place and sphere in the world's work. She heard bold talks by militant women about woman's emancipation and freedom. She attended lectures by intellectual women on the higher life, and the new thought, and the advanced ideas. She read pamphlets and books written by modern women on the work of women in the social, political and industrial fields. She became acquainted with many "new" women who, striving mightily with all their strength of body and soul for careers, looked with a kind of lofty disdain or pitying contempt upon those old-fashioned mothers whose children interfere with the duty that "new" women think they owe the world. But this woman who knew herself to be a woman could not interest herself in these things to which she tried to give attention. She felt that in giving herself to these things she would betray Life. She felt the hollowness, the shallowness, the emptyness of it all in comparison with that which is divinely committed to womankind. She could not but wonder: what would be the racial outcome? When women have long enough substituted other ideals for the ideals of motherhood--other passions for the passions of their sex--other ambitions for the ambition to produce and to perfect Life--other desires for the desire to keep that which Life has committed to them--what then? "How," she asked herself, "would the world get along without mothers? Or how could the race advance if the best of women refused to bear children?" And then came the inevitable thought: are the _best_ women, after all, refusing to bear children? Might it not be that the wisdom of Mother Nature is in this also, and that the refusal of a woman to bear children is the best evidence in the world that she is unfit to be a mother? Is it not better that the mothers of the race should be those who hold no ideal, ambition, desire, aim, or purpose in life higher than motherhood? Such women--such mothers--have, thus far, through their sons and daughters, won every victory in Life. It is they who have made every advance of the race possible. Will it not continue to be so, even unto the end? Is not this indeed the law of Life? If there be any work for women greater or of more value to the human race than the work of motherhood then, indeed, is the end of the world, for mankind, at hand. From where she lay, the woman, when she first awoke that Christmas morning, could see the sun just touching the topmost branches of the tall trees that grew across the street.